Ganesh Chaturthi is the Hindu festival which celebrates the birth of Lord Ganesh, Hinduism's most well known and widely adored figure, the supreme personification of that force we call "obstacles". The commemoration of his birth will start on September 5th, 2016. Traditional Hindu homes will create a colorful clay representation of the elephant headed god, and after many ceremonies and feasts he will be dunked into a body of water and dissolve just like the obstacles he removes. While Ganesh has become one of the most popular deities of the Hindu pantheon, most Hindus know that Ganesha is a relatively new addition to the family of Hinduism, and so his public festivities must have appeared relatively recently. It should come as no surprise to the faithful that the remover of obstacles was brought to the forefront by one of Hinduism's most heroic, inventive and vigilant freedom fighters, Lokmanya Tilak.
It is not known exactly when Ganesh Chaturthi began as a public festival, be we do know that this celebration was limited only to certain regions of India. Shivaji Raj who fought off the Mughals and established the Martha Empire in the 1600s claimed Ganesh as his household deity and so Ganesh Chaturthi was a public event during his reign. With the passage of this aristocracy and the arrival of the British in the 1800s, Ganesh's public festivals faded and he returned to his place as a home and family deity. But Ganesh's power has alway attracted vibrant, truthful and courageous characters and soon his mantle was taken up by one of Hinduism's most ardent warriors, Lokmany Tilak.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was something of a Renaissance Man; a mathematician, teacher, and journalist, but above all else an independence activist. Tilak was born in 1856, his father was a Sanskrit scholar and following in his father's scholarly steps, Tilak graduated from Deccan College with a Bachelors in Mathematics. He became a math instructor at a private school but soon fell out with the administration over ideological differences;. Tilak wanted to see an India free and independent from British rule, and to him that meant instilling nationalism and an appreciation for Indian culture at a young age. Tilak organized the Deccan Education Society and later the Fergusson College where his independence ambitions were infused into the curriculum for the students.
In 1890 Tilak joined the Indian National Congress and soon became one of its most outspoken and adroit members, preaching a message of self rule and freedom from the British. When the British began playing partition politics with Bengal, redrawing lines which would create Hindu minority areas in the North East, Tilak quickly supported the Swadeshi (self-rule) movement and also encouraged boycotts of foreign goods, the goal was a strong and independent India. Such politics eventually led to a rift in the Indian National Congress between the "radicals" and the "moderates", with Tilak heading the radical element of the party himself.
In 1908 two Bengali youth accidentally killed two British women in an attempt to assassinate the usurper puppet Chief Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford of Calcutta. Tilak immediately defended the two youth in the newspaper Kesari and advocated revolutionary action to obtain independence. For this Tilak was imprisoned for nearly 6 years on charges of sedition. While in prison he wrote extensively on independence politics, including his book "Gita Rahasya" which sold many copies and helped to fund other Indian independence movements. After his imprisonment Tilak softened a bit on his rhetoric but still officially opposed the doctrine of "total non-violence" (complete ahimsa).
At the end of his life Tilak committed himself to propagating the ideal of self-rule in India, traveling from village to village enlisting farmers and peasants to the cause. Talik believed in a modern federal system to govern India where every human being could be free. He also promoted Devangari Hindi as the official language of India. His Deccan Education Society runs to this day in Pune India and his Fergusson College was part of the independence movement until its final victory in 1947. The Indian government released a commemorative coin to celebrate Talik's 150th birthday in 2007.
After reading such a biography it is of little wonder that the Lord who removes our obstacle (or puts them in our way if needed) chose this man to be the one who would return him to his seat of public veneration. It was Tilak who in 1893 restored the public festival of Ganesh and made it a universal practice across Hindudom. It was his hope to use the festival to bridge the gap between all sects and "castes" of Hinduism and create a stronger feeling of grassroots unity and nationalism. It was he who prompted our modern ceremony of dropping Ganesha into the river as one community, dissolving away our petty differences like clay in a river. Under Tilak's encouragement, the festival facilitated community participation and involvement in the form of intellectual discourses, poetry recitals, performances of plays, musical concerts, and folk dances.
Of course, Ganesh Chaturthi has a deeper meaning than the life of one man, but it was this one man, Tilak, who brought us one of our most beloved festivals today. No matter the struggle, Tilak continued and like Ganesh he removed obstacles for all Hindus everywhere. This August when we participate in the exciting festival surrounding the birth of Ganesh, take a moment to think about how only a little more than 100 years ago, this festival didn't even exist and the nation of India was under the yoke of British Christian imperialism. Today, this one festival is celebrated across the globe by Hindus of every race and nationality. Under Ganesh's auspices, we truly unite into one people, a spiritual nation, undivided and unanimous in our joy. If Tilak were alive today I am sure he would be proud and he would thank Lord Ganesh for removing just one more obstacle for the human race.
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